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Edward Snowden: Surveillance, Spying Practices Have Brought U.S. to ‘Brink of the Abyss’ - Truthdig. Wired/Platon Edward Snowden has just been granted three more years of asylum in Russia, and the former NSA contractor-turned-whistle-blower is understandably choosy about whom he meets with in person.

In June, he gave top NSA expert James Bamford a good deal of his time for an in-depth Wired story, and Bamford didn’t waste it. Also read: Edward Snowden Can Stay in Russia for 3 More Years In the Wired profile, set off memorably by photographer Platon Antoniou’s images (including the particularly striking portrait shown above), Snowden says he built clues into classified files he perused and leaked to make his intentions apparent to the U.S. government, but that wasn’t ultimately how officials have reacted to his choice to pass documents to a select group of journalists in June 2013: Snowden tells me it doesn’t have to be like this. —Posted by Kasia Anderson More Below the Ad If you have trouble leaving a comment, review this help page.
Internet. Leaked Watchlist Guidelines Show How the Obama Admin Abuses the 'State Secrets' Privilege. The Intercept published a must-read story yesterday revealing the secret and incredibly vague rules the US government uses to place people on its terrorism watchlist.

While the story covers many civil liberties problems associated with the unaccountable process, it also highlights an important topic that has gotten lost in recent debates about government secrecy: the continued abuse of the state secrets privilege. The state secrets privilege is a controversial legal doctrine that has been used by the Bush and Obama administrations to get several lawsuits dismissed alleging serious unconstitutional actions—like torture, illegal surveillance, and due process violations—merely by arguing the issues of were too sensitive to discuss in court without harming national security. Obama once promised to reform the state secrets privilege, but his administration has instead doubled down on its use in several controversial cases.
The airborne panopticon: How plane-mounted cameras watch entire cities. On June 28, 2012, in Dayton, Ohio, police received reports of an attempted robbery.

A man armed with a box cutter had just tried to rob the Annex Naughty N’ Nice adult bookstore. Next, a similar report came from a Subway sandwich shop just a few miles northeast of the bookstore. Coincidentally, a local company named Persistent Surveillance Systems (PSS) was flying a small Cessna aircraft 10,000 feet overhead at the time. The surveillance flight was loaded up with specialized cameras that could watch 25 square miles of territory, and it provided something no ordinary helicopter or police plane could: a Tivo-style time machine that could watch and record movements of every person and vehicle below. After learning about the attempted robberies, PSS conducted frame-by-frame video analysis of the bookstore and sandwich shop and was able to show that exactly one car traveled between them. “You can’t tell if they’re red, white, green, or purple,” Ross McNutt, the company’s CEO, told Ars.
The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.

William Binney is one of the highest-level whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA.

He was a leading code-breaker against the Soviet Union during the Cold War but resigned soon after September 11, disgusted by Washington’s move towards mass surveillance. On 5 July he spoke at a conference in London organised by the Centre for Investigative Journalism and revealed the extent of the surveillance programs unleashed by the Bush and Obama administrations.

“At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US”, Binney said. “This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US.
Huge New Snowden Scoop: Ordinary Internet Users 'Far Outnumbered' Legal Targets. July 6, 2014 | Like this article?

Join our email list: Stay up to date with the latest headlines via email. When the US National Security Agency (NSA) intercepted the online accounts of legally targeted foreigners over a four-year period it also collected the conversations of nine times as many ordinary internet users, both Americans and non-Americans, according to an investigation by the Washington Post. Nearly half of those surveillance files contained names, email addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to US citizens or residents, the Post reported in a story posted on its website on Saturday night.

The intercepted messages contained material of considerable intelligence value, the Post reported, such as information about a secret overseas nuclear project, double-dealing by an ostensible ally, a military calamity that befell an unfriendly power and the identities of aggressive intruders into US computer networks.
Supreme Court Sets Powerful Limits for Cell Searches, Fails to Protect Internet Streaming. San Francisco - The U.S.

Supreme Court issued two big rulings in important technology cases today. In a groundbreaking decision on cell phone privacy, the court set powerful limits for police searches of cell phones, ruling in two consolidated cases that law enforcement must get a warrant before accessing the data on an arrested person's cell phone. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed amicus briefs in both of the cell phone search cases that were at issue in today's decision. "These decisions are huge for digital privacy," EFF Staff Attorney Hanni Fakhoury said.